"It were a happy life
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point." – 3 Henry VI.

FEW things are more variable than the dates assigned to things found
in places where the relics of different ages have become mixed together.
The small stone cube of dials now in the Dover Museum was, when
first dug up, thought to be Roman. It was the only one of the kind
known, and Roman relics had been found near the same spot, beside
the desecrated church of St. Martin's-le-Grand. The church had once
formed part of a Benedictine monastery, and it seems much more likely,
from the appearance of the dials, that they were made by an ingenious
Benedictine and set up on the wall of the monastery in the fourteenth
or fifteenth century, than that they should have lain hidden since the
Roman occupation.1

The stone is a cube of fine-grained oolite, measuring 4 3/4 inches; on
the top there is the remnant of an iron pin, and on the four sides are
sunk dials, heart-shaped, oblong or cylindrical, and triangular. The
stone seems to have been intended to stand on a small pillar or bracket.
The sun-dials are calculated for latitude 47 degrees, so would not have
told the time very accurately at Dover; but they may have served as
models for other dial-makers, or the learned Benedictine may have had
a special value for the relic of which we know nothing:

"We cannot buy with gold the old associations."

Compare with this cube the one found in the monastery at Ivy
Church near Salisbury.1 This is 5 3/4 inches in length and breadth, and
6 3/4 inches in height, but one inch had
been inserted in a pillar, so that the cube
is really perfect. "The corners have
been cut off, so that besides the top and
the four sides eight spaces were available for dials. The south side has a
heart-shaped hollow, like the Dover
cube," with eleven hour lines in it, and
the east face a double plane resembling
an open book. "The west face has
three excavations: a rectangular one
with a plane base, a semi-lenticular one
(the figure being obtained by bisecting
a thick double convex lens), and a rectangular one with a curved base. The semi-lenticular excavation was
filled with a small stylus, indicating the afternoon hours. The north
face has a large sharply-cut crescent recumbent on the convex side."
The eight triangular dials at the corners are much damaged, but each
had a small stylus and excavation. On the top of the cube was a
horizontal dial, and the metallic sub-stile is still visible and many of the
Roman numerals marking the hours. The gnomon was evidently
inclined to the latitude of the place, 50 3/4 degrees.

Dr. Dixon considered that the dial might be assigned to about the
middle of the fourteenth century, when the learning of the Arabs had
found its way into many parts of Europe. The little Dover dial
probably came from France; here we find an English follower. Ivy
Church was founded by Henry II., and for three centuries was a
flourishing home of Augustinian canons.

These little cubes are probably our earliest English examples of
detached dials, that is, dials which stand alone, unattached to walls or
buildings. They also show the return to the earliest antique type,
where the shadow is cast in hollow places scooped out of the stone,
with hour lines drawn upon them. These sunk dials became varied in
form to a degree unknown to the ancients. They were hemispherical,
heart-shaped, cylindrical, triangular,
oblique, and so forth, and to these were
added, on the same stone, the plane, horizontal, vertical, reclining, and indeed almost every variety of dial. This combination of plane and sunk dials cut in
stones which, whether great or small, were
intended to stand alone, was developed
till it became, not merely an ingenious
instrument for ascertaining the time of
day or for imparting scientific knowledge, but a decorative pillar, a work of
art to be placed in courtyards, gardens,
and public squares, at a time when the
luxury of domestic architecture and the
laying out of pleasure grounds began to
be cultivated. These monumental dials
were a product of the Renaissance.

No country shows such magnificent
examples as Scotland. If we take the
English specimens first, it is because
we incline to the belief that some of
them are of earlier date, and that the
history of one of these, now, alas, no
longer in existence, can be certainly
traced to the beginning of the sixteenth
century.
This was the dial which has been already mentioned, made by Nicholas
Cratcher, or Kratzer, for the garden at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
probably in some year between 1520 and 1530. The date of its removal
is not known, but thanks to Robert Hegge, a scholar of Corpus in 1614,
and "a prodigy of his time," says Wood, "for forward and good natural
parts," we have a sketch of it, which we are enabled to reproduce here
by the kindness of Dr. Thomas Fowler, now Vice-Chancellor of Oxford,
in whose work on Corpus Christi College it originally appeared.

Robert Hegge left behind him several MS. works, including two copies
of a treatise on dials and dialling. He thus describes Kratzer's dial:

"In this beautiful Alter (on wch Art has Sacrificed such varietie of
Invention to the Deitie of the Sun) are twelve Gnomons, the Sun's
fellow travellers, who like farr distant inhabitants, dwell some vnder ye
Aequinoctiall, some vnder the Poles, some in more temparat Climats:
some vpon the plains in Plano, some vpon the Mountains in Convexo,
and some in the vallies in Concavo. Here you may see the Aequinoctial dial the Mother of ye rest, who hath the horizons of the paralel
Sphere for her dubble Province, which suffer by course an half year's
night: There the Polar dial wing'd with the lateral Meridian. Here
you may behold the two fac'd Vertical dial which shakes hands with
both Poles: There the Convex dial elevated in triumph vpon 4 iron
arches: Here lastly the Concave dial which shews the Sun at noone the
hemisphere of Night. In other dials neighbouring Clocks betray their
errours, but in this consort of Dials informed with one Soul of Art, they
move all with one motion: and vnite with their stiles the prayse of the
Artificer."

The old dial which stands on a low pedestal in front of the manor
house of Westwood near Bradford-on-Avon, appears from its shape to

have carried on the tradition of Kratzer's work. It is covered also with
dial hollows of various shapes, and has been thought to date from the
seventeenth century. It has possibly been moved of late years into its
present position.

The dial-block at Great Fosters near Egham is of nearly the
same shape as the above. It is about 2 feet high, 1 foot 8 inches wide,
and 10 inches thick. It is placed on a pedestal built of alternate layers
of stone of different size, after the style of the seventeenth century.
All the faces of the block bear dials of different forms. At the top
there is a short column with an iron rod, on
which there was once a weather vane. Standing, as this dial-pillar does, in the centre of a
smooth green lawn bordered with flowers, and
in front of a noble old red-brick Tudor mansion,
with great elm trees round it where the rooks
build, it looks a fitting accompaniment to a
"haunt of ancient peace." The history of the
dial is not known, but it is generally called
"Sir Francis Drake's dial." In all probability
the connection is not with the great sea captain,
but with one of the Drakes of Esher Place,
which, in 1583, was bought by Richard, third
son of John Drake, of Ashe in Devon, the
head of the family from which Sir Francis
sprang. Richard Drake was succeeded by his
son Francis, and he in his turn had a son
Francis, who lived at Walton-on-Thames, and
died in 1634. These places are only a few
miles from Great Fosters House, which about
that time belonged to Sir Robert Foster, Chief Justice of the King's
Bench, who died in 1663 and was buried at Egham. It is not clear
when or from whom Sir Robert bought the place, but he was living
there in 1643. Another tradition has it that the house once belonged
to a Duke of Northumberland, who drew an armillary sphere, which
still remains, on the staircase wall. This would probably be Sir
Robert Dudley, son of the Earl of Leicester, on whom the title of
Duke of Northumberland was bestowed by the Emperor Ferdinand.
He was an ingenious mathematician,1 and many clever instruments designed by him are preserved in the British Museum, at the Institute

1 He was the author of a great work on instruments of navigation, "Del Arcano del
Mare," fol., Florence, 1646.

of "Studii Superiori" at Florence and elsewhere. The house itself
claims a Tudor origin, for Queen Elizabeth's cipher is found there, and
Anne Boleyn's badge, but its history cannot be certainly traced beyond
Sir Robert Foster's time. The appearance of the dial and its pillar
would lead us to connect it with the early part of the seventeenth
century, and most probably with Mr. Francis Drake.

Among the entries in the college books of Gonville and Caius
College at Cambridge in 1576, there is a notice of a pillar in a courtyard, which was "a stone of marvellous workmanship, containing in
itself sixty dials, made by Mr Theodorus Haveas of Cleves, a famous
artist and notable exponent of architecture, blazoned with the arms of the
nobles who then dined in the college,
and dedicated by him to the college
as a token of goodwill. On the
summit of this stone is placed a
winnowing fan, placed
like a Pegasus."

The name of
Theodorus Haveas
has been found at
King's Lynn, where
he settled with his
family. The pillar
was standing in 1769 when Loggan's views were taken, but the dials
were gone.

The fine cube of stone which stands near the side entrance to
Madeley Court, Shropshire, probably belongs to the end of the sixteenth or the early part of the seventeenth century. It stands on four
short pillars, mounted on a circular platform, and approached by steps.
There is a great concave on three of the four sides, surrounded by
smaller hollows of different shapes, and the top is convex. Each of
the hollows shows the hour at a certain time of day, and the position
of the moon in relation to the planets can also be ascertained. The
dials have no history, but the house, which is now divided into dwellings for colliers and their families, was bought from the last prior of
Wenlock Abbey by Robert Brooke, Justice of the Common Pleas, and
probably rebuilt by him. In the time of Charles I. it belonged to Sir
David Brooke, a devoted Royalist and friend of the King; and Charles II.
was concealed for a time in a barn at Madeley during some of his

wanderings. The convex or hemispherical dial is described by Sebastian Münster in his "Horologiographia," 1530.

In Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting" it is stated that in 1619 the
eminent sculptor Nicholas Stone made a dial at St. James's, the King
finding stone and workmanship, for which he received £6 13s. 4d.
"And in 1622," Stone says, "I made the great diall in the Privy
Garden at Whitehall, for the which I had £46, and in that year 1622
I made a dial for my Lord Brooke, in Holbourn, for the which I had
£8 10s. Also for "Sir John Daves, at Chelsea," he made a dial,
and two statues of an old man and woman, for which he received £7
apiece.

The Privy Garden dials, executed by Stone, were, however, designed
by Edmund Gunter, Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, who
in 1624 published a description and use of the same, which he dedicated to King James, praying him to accept these poor fruits of his
younger studies when he was His Majesty's scholar in Westminster
and Christ Church. The stone, he says, was of the same size as that
which stood in the same place before, only that was of Caen stone, and
this of one entire stone from Purbeck Quarry. The base was a square
of more than 4 1/2 feet, the height 3 1/4 feet, and it was wrought with the
like planes and concaves as the former, but many lines different and
such as were not in before. There were five dials described upon the
upper part, four in the four corners, and one, the great horizontal concave, 20 inches deep and 40 inches over, in the middle. The south side
had one great vertical dial, two equinoctial dials, "whereon the sun
never shineth but in winter," one vertical concave in the middle, two
declining dials on either side of this concave, two small polar concaves,
and two irregular dials with three styles in each dial. The east and
west sides had each four great dials, plane, concave, cylindrical, and
a square hollow of many sides, and on the north the lines were drawn
so as to answer to those on the south side. There were also four triangular dials at the four corners. Latin verses explaining the lines and
their colours were inscribed in each of the larger dials.

This fine and curious work was defaced in the reign of Charles II.
by a drunken nobleman of the Court, on which occurrence Andrew
Marvell wrote:

"For a dial the place is too unsecure,
Since the Privy Garden could not it defend;
And so near to the Court they will never endure
Any monument how they their time may misspend."

A dial which appears to resemble in several points this work of
Stone's or Gunter's, is at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, and has
lately been remounted on stone steps and placed in front of the church.
Nothing is known of its history, but it is probably early seventeenth
century work. There is a "great concave" at the top, with a hole near
the bottom for the rain-water to run out, and around the top the hours
are marked in Roman numerals, the signs of the Zodiac being carved
above them, while the sides are covered with dials of different forms, hollowed and plane. Badminton House was not built till 1682, but it
is possible that this dial may have been brought from Raglan Castle,
and if so, its construction and ownership may be connected with two
loyal friends and supporters of Charles I., the first and second Marquesses of Worcester. The second marquess, known also as Earl of
Glamorgan, was not only a gallant soldier, but a man of science and a
mechanician, and has left the record of his discoveries in his "Century
of Inventions."

The fancy of Charles I. for sun-dials was well known. Mr. Oughtred, the mathematician, on being asked by Elias Allen, one of the
King's servants and a noted instrument maker, to advise him as to a
suitable gift for His Majesty, replied that he had "heard that His
Majesty delighted much in the great concave dial at Whitehall, and
what fitter instrument could he have than my horizontal, which was
the very same represented in flat?"

bill of John de Critz, serjeant painter to His Majesty, wherein the
colouring of a dial, opposite some part of the King and Queen's lodging,
is described at some length.

"For several times oyling and laying with fayre white a stone for a sundyall.... the
lines thereof being drawn in several colours, the letters directing to the howers guilded with
fine gould, as also the glorie, and a scrowle guilded with fine gould where the numbers
and figures specifying the planetary howers are inscribed; likewise certaine letters drawne
in black, informing in what part of the compasses the sun at any time there shining shall
be resident, the whole works being circumferenced with a fret painted in manner of a
stone one, the complete measure of the whole being six foot."

Critz also repaired pictures by Palma and Titian, and yet was not
above painting the royal barge and coach.

The catalogue of goods from Oatlands Palace, belonging to Charles I.,
which were sold under the Commonwealth, includes: "Two stone sundyalls with a wooden seat at ye end of ye arbour, valued £3. Sold
Mr. Lavender 29 March 1649 for £2 . 0 . 6d."

Amongst the king's goods offered for sale at Greenwich was "a
great stone sundyal, valued at £30." A purchaser does not appear to
have been found for this.

To the Great Fire of London in 1666 we probably owe the destruction of Dr. Donne's sun-dial, which he set up at the deanery of
St. Paul's, and which he mentions in his will: "My will is that the
four large pictures of the four Great Prophets which hang in the hall,
and that large picture of ancient church work in the lobby, and whatever else I have placed in the chapel (except that wheel of Deskes
which at this time stands there) shall remain in those places, as also
the marble table sonnedyal and pictures which I have placed in the
garden, and an inventory thereof to be made and the things to continue
always in the house as they are." All are gone now; the deanery
was swept away by the Fire, and not a vestige of Dr. Donne's legacies
remain.

In the garden, or rather orchard, of what was formerly the manor
house of Upton near Peterborough, there stands a fine monumental
dial-stone of the seventeenth century. Upton was once the property
of Thomas Dove, Bishop of Peterborough, whom Queen Elizabeth
called her "Dove with the silver wings," and who died in 1630. His
son. Sir William Dove, inherited the place, and lies buried in the little
church or chapel hard by, where there is a noble monument to him and
his two wives. The three figures, life size, lie under a canopy, and
traces of the original colour can be faintly seen under a modern coating
of drab paint.

The dial has, fortunately, only been repaired so far as to fasten
securely a top stone, which was formerly movable, and covered a concave dial. The whole block is 5 feet 10 inches in height, and
3 feet 4 inches in width at the base moulding. The upper part of the
south side is sloped lectern wise; the vertical portion has a heart-shaped hollow. East, west, and north have their several dials, now
overgrown with lichen, but it is not many years since the numerals
could be distinguished. Not far off from this fine old dial-stone is the
stem of a mulberry tree, said to have been planted in Queen Elizabeth's
time, and near it are the remains of the old terraces of the garden. Of
the manor house only the kitchen is left; its wall is 6 feet thick, and
the ivy growing over it has a stem which, from its size, must be some
centuries old. The dial was described and sketched with great detail
a century ago,1 and it still stands, little altered, in the midst of the quiet
fields and old-world surroundings of an out-of-the-way little hamlet.

A stone somewhat resembling this at Upton, but which has met
with much worse treatment, is now mounted on the gate-post of a farmyard at Patrington, Yorkshire. It is also of the lectern shape, with an
oblong hollow on the slope to the south, and a heart-shaped one below.
There was once a concave at the top, and oblong, triangular, and circular
hollows on the east and west sides; these are all much worn away.
The history of the stone has been traced back to 1770, when it was
taken out of the remains of an old house
which appeared to have once belonged to
the Hildyard family. Sir Robert Hildyard, of Patrington, who died 1685, was
a Cavalier who fought in the wars on the
King's side, compounded for delinquency
under the Parliament, and at the restoration of Charles II. was created a baronet.
From the appearance of the dial, as well
as its history, it would seem likely that it
was set up by the old Cavalier in his garden at Patrington, and probably before those civil wars which brought
him into close contact with the great lover of dials, Charles I., to
whom he was made Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1642.1

There are two curious old dial-stones standing in the churchyard at
Elmley Castle, Worcestershire. One of these is placed on the eastern
side of the burial ground, and is a cube of 1 foot 10 inches, rising to a
blunt point, and surmounted by a globular-shaped top; it is covered with
hollows of different forms. In several of these hollows there remains
a thin iron rod, once the gnomon; in others the rods are beaten flat
upon the stone, which is much worn away. The whole height of the
dial does not exceed 3 1/2 feet. On the plane surfaces of the stone,
which is bevelled off at the sides, the remains of two gnomons may be
traced by the lead with which they were fixed. Two of the hemispherical hollows have an iron rod fixed across them, and two other
hollows contain their metal gnomons, tolerably perfect. When the
examination and sketch of this dial was made, about 9 inches of soil
had to be cleared away from its base. This was done some years ago,
and since then the dial has suffered from weather and school-children,
and is much defaced.

The other dial stands near the north-west angle of the churchyard,
and is erected on the base and one of the steps of the old cross. On

1 "Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society," vol. v., "Notes on a Sundial at Patrington."

this foundation there are six courses of stone masonry, rising 2 feet
6 inches in height, and above them is a stone so similar to the dial just
described, that it has been conjectured that they might once have
formed one structure. Three of the sides have hollows of different
shapes, and on the fourth, the north side, is a large shield bearing the
arms of Savage, with numerous quarterings; as Walkinton, Danyers,
Swinerton, Beke, Stanley, Latham, Arderne,
Bagot, Basset, Camvill. These arms were
borne by Christopher Savage, to whom the
manor of Elmley was granted by Henry VIII.
It seems likely that he, or one of his immediate descendants, was the giver of the dial.
The family of Savage held land in the parish
till within the last twenty or thirty years.
At the top of this pillar there is a more
modern block, with four vertical dials on it.

In the village of Elmley Castle there is
a cubical dial on what seems to have been
the shaft of an old cross, and on this the
date ADOM CDCXLVIII is inscribed. It stands
where two roads meet. The dial-block has
unfortunately been placed
upside down, probably at
the last "restoration." One
might read the inscription as
A. DO. MCDCXLVIII, which
would be a very probable
one for the placing of a dialstone on the cross, but not in its present inverted condition.

A dial of the same type as that which bears the Savage arms has
been built into the market cross at Wilton. Some part of one of the
gnomons remains, but the stone has long ceased to be used as a dial,
and we have been unable to find out its history, or even to ascertain
when the curious heterogeneous construction which goes by the name
of "cross" was erected.

The most beautiful and perfect of all known English dials of this
class is at Moccas Court, Herefordshire. It is thought to belong to
the reign of Charles II., and was first set up at Mornington Court on
the opposite side of the Wye, once the property of the Tompkins
family. When this estate came into the possession of the Cornewalls,
now represented by the Rev. Sir George Cornewall, Bart., the dial

was brought to Moccas. It has several mottoes carved upon its sides,
which will be found further on in this work. A dial-stone resembling
this one, but in much worse condition, was once to be seen at Kinlet
near Bewdley, but from inquiries lately made it seems that only a
portion of it remains, and that is now
used as a vase for holding plants!

There has been more than one description published of the "Marvellous
Pyramidicall dial at Whitehall," set up
in 1669, by order of Charles II., in the
Privy Garden facing the Banquetting
House.1 It stood on a stone pedestal,
and consisted of six pieces in the form of
tables or hollow globes, placed one above
another, standing on iron branches, and
lessening in size as they neared the top.
The inventor was the Rev. Francis
Hall alias Lyne, professor of mathematics in the Jesuit college at Liege,
where he had previously erected a similar set of dials, which, in 1703, were reported to be "shamefully
gone to decay." This pyramid is said to have contained no less than 271
different dials, some showing the hours according to
the Jewish, Babylonian, Italian, and Astronomical ways
of reckoning, others with the shadows of the hour lines falling upon
the style; some showing the hour by a style without a shadow, and
others by a shadow without a style. There were also portraits on
glass of the King, his Queen, and the Queen Mother, the Duke of
York, and Prince Rupert. Perhaps the most unusual feature was
a bowl which told the time by fire. This was about 3 inches in
diameter, and was placed, filled with water, in the middle of another
sphere, measuring about 6 inches across, and consisting of several
iron rings which represented the circles of the heavens. By applying the hand to these circles when the sun shone, the enquirer would

feel the burning effect of the sun's rays which passed through the
water bowl and struck upon the ring whereon the true hour was shown.
This ingenious and fantastic construction, in faulty taste, for it was
more curious than pretty, was ill adapted to resist the weather, for
Mr. Leybourne complains, in 1689, that "the Diall for want of a cover,
was much endamaged by the snow lying long frozen upon it, and that
unless a cover were provided (of which he saw little hope), another or
two such tempestuous winters would utterly deface it." Mr. Timbs
says that, about 1710, William Allingham, a mathematician in Cannon
Row, asked £500 to repair this dial, and it was last seen by Vertue at
Buckingham House, from whence it was sold. Father Lyne's own description of this work was published in 1673, and is illustrated by
seventy-three plates. An engraving of it may also be seen in Leybournes Works.

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